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The NYRB Reading Week is hosted by Mrs. B from The Literary Stew & Honey from Coffeespoons.

Reading diary: July 2010

One of the reading challenges I happily signed up for this year is The Fourth Japanese Literature Challenge, hosted by Dolce Bellezza. My interest in Japanese writing is peaking this year. I only ever started reading Japanese writers in earnest last year. Since then, I've steadily read and collected a lot of Japanese books that occupy a large space in my shelf and will occupy my leisure time in the coming days. The only genre in fiction that can compete with this long-term reading of mine is writing from Latin America.


JULY 2010

39. A Universal History of Infamy by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni

A catalog of bad persons and their wrongdoings. Entertaining and funny, and sometimes scary. There are many novels inside this encyclopedia novel. The tradition of writing down personal histories in compressed form (vignettes), popularized here by Borges, clearly extends to contemporary writers. Cases in point: Nazi Literature in the Americas and Written Lives. I detect a representation of multifaceted evil and/or quirkiness in small doses.


40. Some Prefer Nettles by Tanizaki Junichirō, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker

From my review: Kaname and Misako, husband and wife, couldn't bear their relationship anymore. They decided to separate. Misako fell in love with another man; and Kaname, feeling no attachment to his wife, condoned it. Both agreed they need to divorce each other. . . . Tanizaki's novel would have been ordinary soap opera material had it not been for his masterly use of details. His depiction of insular world of puppet plays, of geishas and mistresses, and of the contrasting refinements in the cities of Tokyo and Osaka, [places] the story into a cultural context and in a dramatic light that sublimates all the tension and conflict into a dizzying calmness. The characters are so precise in their barbaric gentleness. They move with the grace of the bourgeoisie, but their inner identity crises are just as crude as modern humanity's.


41. Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco

The puzzle fragments of this novel, like the famed Hundred Islands in Pangasinan, form an island chain of experiences and consciousness. The sequence is filtered through several narrative ecosystems: immigrant experiences, colonialism, cultural diffusion, literary questionings, historical deficits, and failures of identity. At the center of Ilustrado are two writers struggling with their own demons.

It was a pleasure to read this novel from its strong prologue to the multiplicity of excerpts and "excerpts within excerpts." Miguel Syjuco reinvigorated Filipino writing with experimental possibilities. The ending forces one to question the power granted to storytellers. Syjuco's manipulative skills are impressive. I hope his follow up book will not be a long time coming.


42. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

It's amusing to read the slew of negative reviews in Amazon. It's hardly surprising though, given the subject matter of the book and its revolutionary approach to the interpretation of history. Prof. Diamond presents his case well that I think some of the debated quotes in the reviews were taken out of context, or were taken as absolutes. I can imagine why some arguments are controversial. They're not always politically correct and often run against conventional knowledge. Prof. Diamond is talking about the origin of "races," why some are more affluent than others and why some are not destined to prosper. His central argument is quite basic: environment, not race, is the main determinant of success of societies. Very humane and obvious but still debatable. What is impressive is the wealth of evidence presented and the manner in which they are analyzed. The environmental approach to history can run the risk of the "comprehensive syndrome," i.e., too detailed and sweeping and long, that it sometimes reads like a chore. I read it on and off for almost a year. It was like attending a course in ecology. On the strength of this book, I'd likely attend more lectures by Prof. Diamond through his other books.


43. Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas, trans. Anne McLean

False novels - that favored blend of fact and fiction and self-reference - are easily becoming a popular genre in Latin American writing. Along with authors I've been reading a lot (César Aira, Javier Marías, Roberto Bolaño), Javier Cercas is one of its best practitioners. Soldiers of Salamis is a cleverly structured treatise on memory and narrative direction. Its experimental elements hark back to the whimsical device of the playful author of the Quixote.


44. Norwegian Wood I by Murakami Haruki, trans. Alfred Birnbaum

The "red book" is the first of two small volumes of Norwegian Wood published by Kodansha. Norwergian Wood is one of the most popular and widely read books of Murakami, in Japan or elsewhere. The story tells of a pair of young lovers trying to deal with their painful past. My first impressions border between boredom and irritation. I didn't find much to admire in the slow unfolding (plodding) of the plot. The writing style, at least in this first-half, is pedestrian and dry. It made me think that perhaps I prefer the sci-fi side of Murakami. By the second volume, the story starts to pick up momentum with some interesting characters popping in. In fact, the second volume completely redeemed the story for me. But I'm jumping ahead.


45. Death in Midsummer by Mishima Yukio, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker, Ivan Morris, Donald Keene, and Geoffrey W. Sargent

It's a compilation meant to showcase the full range of Mishima's themes. Not a greatest hits collection of stories, but the handful of precious jewels makes it a worthwhile read. Three or four stories deserve the highest rating. One story called "Patriotism" particularly makes one squirm with a graphic tale of suicide. It's one of the best books I've read this year. Mishima defies my expectations. He is a real find.

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám of Naishapur (Edward FitzGerald)

In Chapter VIII of The Rings of Saturn (trans. Michael Hulse), W. G. Sebald touched upon the life of Edward FitzGerald, one of the many literary portraits that populate his books and lend them an encyclopedic quality. FitzGerald dabbled in many writing projects but only ever completed one:

The only task FitzGerald finished and published in his lifetime was his marvellous rendering of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, with whom he felt a curiously close affinity across a distance of eight centuries. FitzGerald described the endless hours he spent translating this poem of two hundred and twenty-four lines as a colloquy with the dead man and an attempt to bring to us tidings of him. The English verses he devised for the purpose, which radiate with a pure, seemingly unselfconscious beauty, feign an anonymity that disdains even the least claim to authorship, and draws us, word by word, to an invisible point where the mediaeval orient and the fading occident can come [together in] a way never allowed them by the calamitous course of history. For in and out, above, about, below,/'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-Show,/ Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun, / Round which the Phantom Figures come and go. The Rubaiyat was published in 1859, and it was also in that year that William Browne, who probably meant more to FitzGerald than anyone else on earth, died a painful death from serious injuries sustained in a hunting accident....

That last sentence is Sebald's characteristic way of delivering unannounced, like "Phantom Figures," shifts in his narratives.

In my edition of Rubáiyát (Castle Books, illustrated, undated) , the preface mentions that FitzGerald's translation was a "paraphrase" of the 12th century poem. The first published translation contained a total of 75 rubáiyát (plural of rubái). A rubái is a self-contained quatrain, an epigram on its own and a popular form of Persian poetry. FitzGerald's version is not literal but rather a liberal rendering into verse of only a selection of Omar Khayyám's rubáiyát. About half of FitzGerald's 75 quatrains are faithfully rendered. The rest are formed as combinations of other rubáiyát, by Omar Khayyám's or by other poets.

The English text brought Omar Khayyám into the attention of many scholars. The poem in English is now considered a masterpiece in its own right. Its loose interpretation of the spirit of oriental poetry was seen as an artful appropriation of the original. The first readers of the 1859 Rubáiyát were struck by its accessibility and beauty. Even today, reading it could generate excitement for the reader. Its rhythms and content bring one to an understanding of poetry that is timeless in its fleeting passages, to emotional states both evanescent and lasting, borrowed for the duration of reading until the words "Tamám Shud" (The Very End).

The following are some of my favorite rubáiyát, mostly from the second half of the sequence, numbered as they occur in the book. The titles are mine.

                      46. Brief candle

For in and out, above, about, below,
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
    Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

                      51. Finality

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

                      52. Futility

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
    Lift not thy hands to 'It' for help—for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

                      53. Circularity

With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man's knead,
And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
    Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

                      60. Free will

And, strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot
Some could articulate, while others not:
    And suddenly one more impatient cried—
'Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?'

                      65. Hope

Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh,
'My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry:
    But, fill me with the old familiar Juice,
Methinks I might recover by-and-bye!'

                      72. Transience

Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close!
    The Nightingale that in the Branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!

                      73. Regret

Ah Love! could Thou and I with Faith conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
    Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

Conversation about a cathedral: Or, what would Roberto think?

Of course, the well-read and opinionated Bolaño has certain opinions of Vargas Llosa. When asked about what comes to his mind when he hears the name of García Márquez, he replied: "A man who's enchanted by the fact that he's known so many presidents and archbishops." And Vargas Llosa: "The same, but more polished."

Among the celebrated Boom writers (García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Fuentes, and Cortázar), Cortázar is apparently the one he most admired. As for Carlos Fuentes, he also had some things to say. He thought that Octavio Paz is "more universal" than Fuentes, that Paz is a "more interesting" writer of prose (in his essays) than Fuentes, and if he had to sit between them, he'd rather "sit closer to Octavio Paz than to Fuentes."

Bolaño's writing is seen as a break from the magical realist mode of the Boom writers and their imitators. His fiction is a sort of reaction to the previous generation's realism. However, it doesn't mean that he entirely objected to the literary outputs of the rest of the Boom writers. Possibly, he didn't like their politics or he just didn't like them as persons. But still he was an avid reader of their books. In a 1999 interview with two writers of a Chilean magazine (one of his published interviews in English), he shared his positive assessment of the (now) two Nobel winners.

Soto & Bravo: Perhaps the emblematic figures of the [Boom] movement were too adored, an injustice for quieter figures like Monterroso and Onetti, who are vindicated more and more. They’ve stayed relevant with the passage of time.

Bolaño: I don’t believe so. The literature of Vargas Llosa or García Márquez is gigantic.

Soto & Bravo: A cathedral.

Bolaño: More than a cathedral. I do not think time will harm them. The work of Vargas Llosa, for example, is immense. It has thousands of entry points and thousands of exit points. So does the literature of García Márquez. They’re both public figures. They’re not just literary figures. Vargas Llosa was a candidate for president. García Márquez is a political heavyweight and very influential in Latin America. This distorts things a bit, but it shouldn’t make us lose sight of the position they have in the hierarchy. They are superiors, superior to the people who came after and, to be sure, to the writers of my generation….

I suppose, though I’m not entirely sure, he didn’t answer in an ironic tone.

October 2010 is ...

Nobel Prize for Literature Month.

A new laureate will be announced and many will scratch their heads wondering why this writer was chosen. A handful of this writer's devoted fans will jump for joy. A speech will be delivered by this writer before the end of the year. And the world will continue to turn on its axis.

Meanwhile I plan to finish the following books ...

• Don Quixote - for the "Windmills for the Mind" whirlwind reading, hosted by Stu at Winstonsdad's Blog. It's supposed to end on September, but you know how it is with thickness.

• The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt - the Fall Read of Conversational Reading is now on its second week.

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - the Classic Group Read of one of my groups in Shelfari.

• Dance Dance Dance by Murakami Haruki - the 6th book in my ongoing "Murakami Q Reading Plan," in which I read the Japanese novelist's first 9 books in chronological order of their Japanese publication

• The Jaguar by João Guimarães Rosa - I've read the first three stories and so far the selection, translated by David Treece, are no less than brilliant. They show off, in dazzling prose, some recognized Rosean virtues such as neologism, stream of consciousness, and wordplay. I hope (pray) Prof. Treece takes on the dream project of bringing a new version of Grande Sertão: Veredas and the first publication in English of the novellas in Corpo de Baile. These two works, both originally published in 1956, are said to constitute the essential corpus of Guimarães Rosa, arguably the epitome of Latin American writing of the past century.

... and start another book by César Aira, a book from NYRB, and a collection of poems (by Akhmatova or Vallejo or Szymborska).

I humbly accept the prize of reading for pleasure, whether or not J. M. Coetzee finally snags the Nobel.

(tee-hee)